Defining and identifying the knowledge economy in Scotland: a regional perspective on a global phenomenon

The development and growth of a knowledge economy has become a key policy aim forgovernments in all advanced economies. This is based on recognition that technologicalchange, the swift growth of global communications, and the ease of mobility of capital across national borders has dramatically changed the patterns of international trade and investment. The economic fate of individual nations is now inseparably integrated into the ebb and flow of the global economy. When companies can quickly move capital to those geographical locations which offer the best return, a country's long term prosperity is now heavily dependent on its abilityto retain the essential factors of production that are least mobile. This has led to apremium being placed on the knowledge and skills embodied in a country's labourforce, as it has become a widely accepted view that a country which possesses a high level of knowledge and skills in its workforce will have a competitive advantage overothers with a lower domestic skill base. Knowledge and skills are thought to be thebasis for the development of a knowledge economy

Negative Urgency and Its Role in the Association between Image Distorting Defensive Style and Reactive Aggression

Although the association between immature defensive styles to protect oneself from conflict in emotional context and reactive aggression (RA) has been shown recently among nonclinical individuals, the factors that may explain this relationship remain poorly understood. One putative factor is negative urgency as impulsive individuals tend to react aggressively in emotional contexts. This study aims to verify whether the relationship between image distorting defensive style and RA is moderated and not mediated by negative urgency of trait impulsivity. Nonclinical participants completed the Defensive Style Questionnaire, the UPPS Impulsivity Behavior Scale, and the Reactive-Proactive Aggression Questionnaire. Contrary to what was expected, the results showed that the relationship between image distortion and RA was entirely mediated but not moderated by the effect of negative urgency. These results suggest that when individuals get in a defensive state leading to a distortion of the image of themselves and others, they become more emotionally impulsive, leading to RA

Developing a conformance methodology for clinically-defined medical record headings:a preliminary report.

Background: The Professional Records Standards Body for health and social care (PRSB) was formed in 2013 to develop and assure professional standards for the content and structure of patient records across all care disciplines in the UK. Although the PRSB work is aimed at Electronic Health Record (EHR) adoption and interoperability to support continuity of care, the current technical guidance is limited and ambiguous. Objectives: This project was initiated as a proof-ofconcept to demonstrate whether, and if so, how, conformance methods can be developed based on the professional standards. Methods: An expert group was convened, comprising clinical and technical representatives. A constrained data set was defined for an outpatient letter, using the subset of outpatient headings that are also present in the ep-SOS patient summary. A mind map was produced for the main sections and sub-sections. An openEHR archetype model was produced as the basis for creating HL7 and IHE implementation artefacts. Results: Several issues about data definition and representation were identified when attempting to map the outpatient headings to the epSOS patient summary, partly due to the difference between process and static viewpoints. Mind maps have been a simple and helpful way to visualize the logical information model and expose and resolve disagreements about which headings are purely for human navigation and which, if any, have intrinsic meaning. Conclusions: Conformance testing is feasible but nontrivial. In contrast to traditional standards-development timescales, PRSB needs an agile standards development process with EHR vendor and integrator collaboration to ensure implementability and widespread adoption. This will require significant clinical and technical resources

Foreign investment in Scotland

A significant feature of the UK economy throughout the post-war period has been the growth in direct foreign investment in manufacturing industries. For the host nation the main benefits are employment creation, income generation and import reduction or export expansion. Scotland has been particularly successful in attracting the lion's inward investment for example in the period 1945- 1965 a total of 108,500 jobs were created by foreign firms setting up manufacturing units in the despite its size, obtained 46,221 (42.6%), whereas the second most SE England, gained only 16,926 (15.6%). The reasons for this success have been attributed primarily to a combination of the availability of labour in Scotland, the financial inducements offered by central government as part of regional policy and, the undoubted attraction of the environment, notably of course golf courses, for foreign businessmen. This brief paper explores the nature of Scotland's direct foreign investment and the reasons for its success

Tourism in Scotland

In 1978 13.2 million tourist and business travellers spent £523 million in Scotland, Foreign visitors, although only 8.5% of the total, contributed £158 million (ie 30.2%) of tourist expenditure. As such tourism is both an "invisible" export, since it is a means of earning foreign exchange, and a significant provider of jobs, many of which are created in the remoter rural areas. Despite its importance statistics relating specifically to tourism are not readily available from published sources. The "industry" actually combines the resources of a wide range of activities, most of which have economic and social links with other sectors of the economy independent from tourism. These include hotels and catering, transport and travel services as well as entertainment, sport and recreation facilities. Consequently the economic impact of tourism is generally assessed not in terms of employment and output but by more indirect measures such as numbers of visitors, or bednights spent in Scotland, as well as tourist expenditure and hotel occupancy data. This brief will examine the wider economic impact of Scotland's tourism industry and its future

Review of the quarter's economic trends [May 1983]

The one thing this recovery does not lack is confidence. Surveys of business opinion in all the major economies reveal a greater level of optimism amongst the business community than at any time since 1979. But confidence alone is not adequate for a sustained recovery though it certainly helps. As this brief analysis shows, two constraints stand in the way of a worldwide upturn: real interest rates remain high and the response of governments to any acceleration of inflation remains unknown. The downward rigidity of nominal interest rates bears witness to the financial markets' belief that present low levels of inflation are not sustainable, yet if governments react to the expected mild acceleration of inflation in the latter half of this year with the policies of the recent past no significant recovery is likely. Further analysis of UK and world economic data are provided

The tax and price index

A feature of this year's Budget was the shift in emphasis from direct taxation to indirect taxation. The annual yield of income tax has been reduced by £4½ billion while that of direct taxes was increased by a similar amount. It must be acknowledged that the new tax and price index has a number of deficiencies. It is only applicable to a proportion of the population, namely those who pay tax and whose gross income is less than £10,000 per annum. It takes no account of the social wage, nor of changes in benefits, such as the recent restructuring of child allowance. It smoothes out tax payments over a full year even though, for administrative reasons, these may fluctuate widely from month to month. This brief paper explores some of these deficiencies in more detail and assess their impact on taxation

The Scottish economy [October 1979]

The previous two issues of this Commentary have both indicated that the Scottish economy has been performing poorly since the mid 1970's. This is true in both an absolute and a relative sense. Manufacturing production only increased by 1.2% between 1976 and 1978 and, after dropping below 1975 levels in the first quarter of 1979, is unlikely to show any substantial improvement for the year as a whole. In an international context the 1975-1978 performance can best be described as appalling. Over the same period industrial production in Eire grew by 28%, in Japan and the US by 23% and in West Germany and France by 15%. Inertia in developing new markets and lack of competitiveness in existing markets both contributed substantially to the virtual stagnation of Scottish output. Because the problems are so diverse, so too must be the solutions

Population policies and education: exploring the contradictions of neo-liberal globalisation

The world is increasingly characterised by profound income, health and social inequalities (Appadurai, 2000). In recent decades development initiatives aimed at reducing these inequalities have been situated in a context of increasing globalisation with a dominant neo-liberal economic orthodoxy. This paper argues that neo-liberal globalisation contains inherent contradictions regarding choice and uniformity. This is illustrated in this paper through an exploration of the impact of neo-liberal globalisation on population policies and programmes. The dominant neo-liberal economic ideology that has influenced development over the last few decades has often led to alternative global visions being overlooked. Many current population and development debates are characterised by polarised arguments with strongly opposing aims and views. This raises the challenge of finding alternatives situated in more middle ground that both identify and promote the socially positive elements of neo-liberalism and state intervention, but also to limit their worst excesses within the population field and more broadly. This paper concludes with a discussion outling the positive nature of middle ground and other possible alternatives